noiseless wings, which continually went on pilgrimage to the Grotto. In
her dreams, indeed, she must have continually lived at Lourdes, though in
the flesh she had not even gone there for either her father's or her
mother's funeral. Yet she loved her kin; she was anxious to procure work
for her relations who had remained poor, and she had insisted on seeing
her eldest brother, who, coming to Nevers to complain, had been refused
admission to the convent. However, he found her weary and resigned, and
she did not ask him a single question about New Lourdes, as though that
rising town were no longer her own. The year of the crowning of the
Virgin, a priest whom she had deputed to pray for her before the Grotto
came back and told her of the never-to-be forgotten wonders of the
ceremony, the hundred thousand pilgrims who had flocked to it, and the
five-and-thirty bishops in golden vestments who had assembled in the
resplendent Basilica. Whilst listening, she trembled with her customary
little quiver of desire and anxiety. And when the priest exclaimed, "Ah!
if you had only seen that pomp!" she answered: "Me! I was much better
here in my little corner in the infirmary." They had robbed her of her
glory; her work shone forth resplendently amidst a continuous hosanna,
and she only tasted joy in forgetfulness, in the gloom of the cloister,
where the opulent farmers of the Grotto forgot her. It was never the
re-echoing solemnities that prompted her mysterious journeys; the little
bird of her soul only winged its lonesome flight to Lourdes on days of
solitude, in the peaceful hours when no one could there disturb its
devotions. It was before the wild primitive Grotto that she returned to
kneel, amongst the bushy eglantine, as in the days when the Gave was not
walled in by a monumental quay. And it was the old town that she visited
at twilight, when the cool, perfumed breezes came down from the
mountains, the old painted and gilded semi-Spanish church where she had
made her first communion, the old Asylum so full of suffering where
during eight years she had grown accustomed to solitude--all that poor,
innocent old town, whose every paving-stone awoke old affections in her
memory's depths.
And did Bernadette ever extend the pilgrimage of her dreams as far as
Bartres? Probably, at times when she sat in her invalid-chair and let
some pious book slip from her tired hands, and closed her eyes, Bartres
did appear to her, lighting up the darkness of her view. The little
antique Romanesque church with sky-blue nave and blood-red altar screens
stood there amidst the tombs of the narrow cemetery. Then she would find
herself once more in the house of the Lagues, in the large room on the
left, where the fire was burning, and where, in winter-time, such
wonderful stories were told whilst the big clock gravely ticked the hours
away. At times the whole countryside spread out before her, meadows
without end, giant chestnut-trees beneath which you lost yourself,
deserted table-lands whence you descried the distant mountains, the Pic
du Midi and the Pic de Viscos soaring aloft as airy and as rose-coloured
as dreams, in a paradise such as the legends have depicted. And
afterwards, afterwards came her free childhood, when she scampered off
whither she listed in the open air, her lonely, dreamy thirteenth year,
when with all the joy of living she wandered through the immensity of
nature. And now, too, perhaps, she again beheld herself roaming in the
tall grass among the hawthorn bushes beside the streams on a warm sunny
day in June. Did she not picture herself grown, with a lover of her own
age, whom she would have loved with all the simplicity and affection of
her heart? Ah! to be a child again, to be free, unknown, happy once more,
to love afresh, and to love differently! The vision must have passed
confusedly before her--a husband who worshipped her, children gaily
growing up around her, the life that everybody led, the joys and sorrows
that her own parents had known, and which her children would have had to
know in their turn. But little by little all vanished, and she again
found herself in her chair of suffering, imprisoned between four cold
walls, with no other desire than a longing one for a speedy death, since
she had been denied a share of the poor common happiness of this world.
Bernadette's ailments increased each year. It was, in fact, the
commencement of her passion, the passion of this new child-Messiah, who
had come to bring relief to the unhappy, to announce to mankind the
religion of divine justice and equality in the face of miracles which
flouted the laws of impassible nature. If she now rose it was only to
drag herself from chair to chair for a few days at a time, and then she
would have a relapse and be again forced to take to her bed. Her
sufferings became terrible. Her hereditary nervousness, her asthma,
aggravated by cloister life, had probably turned into phthisis. She
coughed frightfully, each fit rending her burning chest and leaving her
half dead. To complete her misery, caries of the right knee-cap
supervened, a gnawing disease, the shooting pains of which caused her to
cry aloud. Her poor body, to which dressings were continually being
applied, became one great sore, which was irritated by the warmth of her
bed, by her prolonged sojourn between sheets whose friction ended by
breaking her skin. One and all pitied her; those who beheld her martyrdom
said that it was impossible to suffer more, or with greater fortitude.
She tried some of the Lourdes water, but it brought her no relief. Lord,
Almighty King, why cure others and not cure her? To save her soul? Then
dost Thou not save the souls of the others? What an inexplicable
selection! How absurd that in the eternal evolution of worlds it should
be necessary for this poor being to be tortured! She sobbed, and again
and again said in order to keep up her courage: "Heaven is at the end,
but how long the end is in coming!" There was ever the idea that
suffering is the test, that it is necessary to suffer upon earth if one
would triumph elsewhere, that suffering is indispensable, enviable, and
blessed. But is this not blasphemous, O Lord? Hast Thou not created youth
and joy? Is it Thy wish that Thy creatures should enjoy neither the sun,
nor the smiling Nature which Thou hast created, nor the human affections
with which Thou hast endowed their flesh? She dreaded the feeling of
revolt which maddened her at times, and wished also to strengthen herself
against the disease which made her groan, and she crucified herself in
thought, extending her arms so as to form a cross and unite herself to
Jesus, her limbs against His limbs, her mouth against His mouth,
streaming the while with blood like Him, and steeped like Him in
bitterness! Jesus died in three hours, but a longer agony fell to her,
who again brought redemption by pain, who died to give others life. When
her bones ached with agony she would sometimes utter complaints, but she
reproached herself immediately. "Oh! how I suffer, oh! how I suffer! but
what happiness it is to bear this pain!" There can be no more frightful
words, words pregnant with a blacker pessimism. Happy to suffer, O Lord!
but why, and to what unknown and senseless end? Where is the reason in
this useless cruelty, in this revolting glorification of suffering, when
from the whole of humanity there ascends but one desperate longing for
health and happiness?
In the midst of her frightful sufferings, however, Sister Marie-Bernard
took the final vows on September 22, 1878. Twenty years had gone by since
the Blessed Virgin had appeared to her, visiting her as the Angel had
visited the Virgin, choosing her as the Virgin had been chosen, amongst
the most lowly and the most candid, that she might hide within her the
secret of King Jesus. Such was the mystical explanation of that election
of suffering, the /raison d'etre/ of that being who was so harshly
separated from her fellows, weighed down by disease, transformed into the
pitiable field of every human affliction. She was the "garden inclosed"*
that brings such pleasure to the gaze of the Spouse. He had chosen her,
then buried her in the death of her hidden life. And even when the
unhappy creature staggered beneath the weight of her cross, her
companions would say to her: "Do you forget that the Blessed Virgin
promised you that you should be happy, not in this world, but in the
next?" And with renewed strength, and striking her forehead, she would
answer: "Forget? no, no! it is here!" She only recovered temporary energy
by means of this illusion of a paradise of glory, into which she would
enter escorted by seraphims, to be forever and ever happy. The three
personal secrets which the Blessed Virgin had confided to her, to arm her
against evil, must have been promises of beauty, felicity, and
immortality in heaven. What monstrous dupery if there were only the
darkness of the earth beyond the grave, if the Blessed Virgin of her
dream were not there to meet her with the prodigious guerdons she had
promised! But Bernadette had not a doubt; she willingly undertook all the
little commissions with which her companions naively entrusted her for
Heaven: "Sister Marie-Bernard, you'll say this, you'll say that, to the
Almighty." "Sister Marie-Bernard, you'll kiss my brother if you meet him
in Paradise." "Sister Marie-Bernard, give me a little place beside you
when I die." And she obligingly answered each one: "Have no fear, I will
do it!" Ah! all-powerful illusion, delicious repose, power ever reviving
and consolatory!
* Song of Solomon iv. 12.
And then came the last agony, then came death.
On Friday, March 28, 1879, it was thought that she would not last the
night. She had a despairing longing for the tomb, in order that she might
suffer no more, and live again in heaven. And thus she obstinately
refused to receive extreme unction, saying that twice already it had
cured her. She wished, in short, that God would let her die, for it was
more than she could bear; it would have been unreasonable to require that
she should suffer longer. Yet she ended by consenting to receive the
sacraments, and her last agony was thereby prolonged for nearly three
weeks. The priest who attended her frequently said: "My daughter, you
must make the sacrifice of your life"; and one day, quite out of
patience, she sharply answered him: "But, Father, it is no sacrifice." A
terrible saying, that also, for it implied disgust at /being/, furious
contempt for existence, and an immediate ending of her humanity, had she
had the power to suppress herself by a gesture. It is true that the poor
girl had nothing to regret, that she had been compelled to banish
everything from her life, health, joy, and love, so that she might leave
it as one casts off a soiled, worn, tattered garment. And she was right;
she condemned her useless, cruel life when she said: "My passion will
finish only at my death; it will not cease until I enter into eternity."
And this idea of her passion pursued her, attaching her more closely to
the cross with her Divine Master. She had induced them to give her a
large crucifix; she pressed it vehemently against her poor maidenly
breast, exclaiming that she would like to thrust it into her bosom and
leave it there. Towards the end, her strength completely forsook her, and
she could no longer grasp the crucifix with her trembling hands. "Let it
be tightly tied to me," she prayed, "that I may feel it until my last
breath!" The Redeemer upon that crucifix was the only spouse that she was
destined to know; His bleeding kiss was to be the only one bestowed upon
her womanhood, diverted from nature's course. The nuns took cords, passed
them under her aching back, and fastened the crucifix so roughly to her
bosom that it did indeed penetrate it.
At last death took pity upon her. On Easter Monday she was seized with a
great fit of shivering. Hallucinations perturbed her, she trembled with
fright, she beheld the devil jeering and prowling around her. "Be off, be
off, Satan!" she gasped; "do not touch me, do not carry me away!" And
amidst her delirium she related that the fiend had sought to throw
himself upon her, that she had felt his mouth scorching her with all the
flames of hell. The devil in a life so pure, in a soul without sin! what
for, O Lord! and again I ask it, why this relentless suffering, intense
to the very last, why this nightmare-like ending, this death troubled
with such frightful fancies, after so beautiful a life of candour,
purity, and innocence? Could she not fall asleep serenely in the
peacefulness of her chaste soul? But doubtless so long as breath remained
in her body it was necessary to leave her the hatred and dread of life,
which is the devil. It was life which menaced her, and it was life which
she cast out, in the same way that she denied life when she reserved to
the Celestial Bridegroom her tortured, crucified womanhood. That dogma of
the Immaculate Conception, which her dream had come to strengthen, was a
blow dealt by the Church to woman, both wife and mother. To decree that
woman is only worthy of worship on condition that she be a virgin, to
imagine that virgin to be herself born without sin, is not this an insult
to Nature, the condemnation of life, the denial of womanhood, whose true
greatness consists in perpetuating life? "Be off, be off, Satan! let me
die without fulfilling Nature's law." And she drove the sunshine from the
room and the free air that entered by the window, the air that was sweet
with the scent of flowers, laden with all the floating germs which
transmit love throughout the whole vast world.
On the Wednesday after Easter (April 16th), the death agony commenced. It
is related that on the morning of that day one of Bernadette's
companions, a nun attacked with a mortal illness and lying in the
infirmary in an adjoining bed, was suddenly healed upon drinking a glass
of Lourdes water. But she, the privileged one, had drunk of it in vain.
God at last granted her the signal favour which she desired by sending
her into the good sound sleep of the earth, in which there is no more
suffering. She asked pardon of everyone. Her passion was consummated;
like the Saviour, she had the nails and the crown of thorns, the scourged
limbs, the pierced side. Like Him she raised her eyes to heaven, extended
her arms in the form of a cross, and uttered a loud cry: "My God!" And,
like Him, she said, towards three o'clock: "I thirst." She moistened her
lips in the glass, then bowed her head and expired.
Thus, very glorious and very holy, died the Visionary of Lourdes,
Bernadette Soubirous, Sister Marie-Bernard, one of the Sisters of Charity
of Nevers. During three days her body remained exposed to view, and vast
crowds passed before it; a whole people hastened to the convent, an
interminable procession of devotees hungering after hope, who rubbed
medals, chaplets, pictures, and missals against the dead woman's dress,
to obtain from her one more favour, a fetish bringing happiness. Even in
death her dream of solitude was denied her: a mob of the wretched ones of
this world rushed to the spot, drinking in illusion around her coffin.
And it was noticed that her left eye, the eye which at the time of the
apparitions had been nearest to the Blessed Virgin, remained obstinately
open. Then a last miracle amazed the convent: the body underwent no
change, but was interred on the third day, still supple, warm, with red
lips, and a very white skin, rejuvenated as it were, and smelling sweet.
And to-day Bernadette Soubirous, exiled from Lourdes, obscurely sleeps
her last sleep at Saint Gildard, beneath a stone slab in a little chapel,
amidst the shade and silence of the old trees of the garden, whilst
yonder the Grotto shines resplendently in all its triumph.
Pierre ceased speaking; the beautiful, marvellous story was ended. And
yet the whole carriage was still listening, deeply impressed by that
death, at once so tragic and so touching. Compassionate tears fell from
Marie's eyes, while the others, Elise Rouquet, La Grivotte herself, now
calmer, clasped their hands and prayed to her who was in heaven to
intercede with the Divinity to complete their cure. M. Sabathier made a
big sign of the cross, and then ate a cake which his wife had bought him
at Poitiers.
M. de Guersaint, whom sad things always upset, had fallen asleep again in
the middle of the story. And there was only Madame Vincent, with her face
buried in her pillow, who had not stirred, like a deaf and blind
creature, determined to see and hear nothing more.
Meanwhile the train rolled, still rolled along. Madame de Jonquiere,
after putting her head out of the window, informed them that they were
approaching Etampes. And, when they had left that station behind them,
Sister Hyacinthe gave the signal, and they recited the third chaplet of
the Rosary, the five glorious mysteries--the Resurrection of Our Lord,
the Ascension of Our Lord, the Mission of the Holy Ghost, the Assumption
of the Most Blessed Virgin, and the Crowning of the Most Blessed Virgin.
And afterwards they sang the canticle:
"O Virgin, in thy help I put my trust."
Then Pierre fell into a deep reverie. His glance had turned towards the
now sunlit landscape, the continual flight of which seemed to lull his
thoughts. The noise of the wheels was making him dizzy, and he ended by
no longer recognising the familiar horizon of this vast suburban expanse
with which he had once been acquainted. They still had to pass Bretigny
and Juvisy, and then, in an hour and a half at the utmost, they would at
last be at Paris. So the great journey was finished! the inquiry, which
he had so much desired to make, the experiment which he had attempted
with so much passion, were over! He had wished to acquire certainty, to
study Bernadette's case on the spot, and see if grace would not come back
to him in a lightning flash, restoring him his faith. And now he had
settled the point--Bernadette had dreamed through the continual torments
of her flesh, and he himself would never believe again. And this forced
itself upon his mind like a brutal fact: the simple faith of the child
who kneels and prays, the primitive faith of young people, bowed down by
an awe born of their ignorance, was dead. Though thousands of pilgrims
might each year go to Lourdes, the nations were no longer with them; this
attempt to bring about the resurrection of absolute faith, the faith of
dead-and-gone centuries, without revolt or examination, was fatally
doomed to fail. History never retraces its steps, humanity cannot return
to childhood, times have too much changed, too many new inspirations have
sown new harvests for the men of to-day to become once more like the men
of olden time. It was decisive; Lourdes was only an explainable accident,
whose reactionary violence was even a proof of the extreme agony in which
belief under the antique form of Catholicism was struggling. Never again,
as in the cathedrals of the twelfth century, would the entire nation
kneel like a docile flock in the hands of the Master. To blindly,
obstinately cling to the attempt to bring that to pass would mean to dash
oneself against the impossible, to rush, perhaps, towards great moral
catastrophes.
And of his journey there already only remained to Pierre an immense
feeling of compassion. Ah! his heart was overflowing with pity; his poor
heart was returning wrung by all that he had seen. He recalled the words
of worthy Abbe Judaine; and he had seen those thousands of unhappy beings
praying, weeping, and imploring God to take pity on their suffering; and
he had wept with them, and felt within himself, like an open wound, a
sorrowful fraternal feeling for all their ailments. He could not think of
those poor people without burning with a desire to relieve them. If it
were true that the faith of the simple-minded no longer sufficed; if one
ran the risk of going astray in wishing to turn back, would it become
necessary to close the Grotto, to preach other efforts, other sufferings?
However, his compassion revolted at that thought. No, no! it would be a
crime to snatch their dream of Heaven from those poor creatures who
suffered either in body or in mind, and who only found relief in kneeling
yonder amidst the splendour of tapers and the soothing repetition of
hymns. He had not taken the murderous course of undeceiving Marie, but
had sacrificed himself in order to leave her the joy of her fancy, the
divine consolation of having been healed by the Virgin. Where was the man
hard enough, cruel enough, to prevent the lowly from believing, to rob
them of the consolation of the supernatural, the hope that God troubled
Himself about them, that He held a better life in His paradise in reserve
for them? All humanity was weeping, desperate with anguish, like some
despairing invalid, irrevocably condemned, and whom only a miracle could
save. He felt mankind to be unhappy indeed, and he shuddered with
fraternal affection in the presence of such pitiable humility, ignorance,
poverty in its rags, disease with its sores and evil odour, all the lowly
sufferers, in hospital, convent, and slums, amidst vermin and dirt, with
ugliness and imbecility written on their faces, an immense protest
against health, life, and Nature, in the triumphal name of justice,
equality, and benevolence. No, no! it would never do to drive the
wretched to despair. Lourdes must be tolerated, in the same way that you
tolerate a falsehood which makes life possible. And, as he had already
said in Bernadette's chamber, she remained the martyr, she it was who
revealed to him the only religion which still filled his heart, the
religion of human suffering. Ah! to be good and kindly, to alleviate all
ills, to lull pain, to sleep in a dream, to lie even, so that no one
might suffer any more!
The train passed at full speed through a village, and Pierre vaguely
caught sight of a church nestling amidst some large apple trees. All the
pilgrims in the carriage crossed themselves. But he was now becoming
uneasy, scruples were tingeing his reverie with anxiety. This religion of
human suffering, this redemption by pain, was not this yet another lure,
a continual aggravation of pain and misery? It is cowardly and dangerous
to allow superstition to live. To tolerate and accept it is to revive the
dark evil ages afresh. It weakens and stupefies; the sanctimoniousness
bequeathed by heredity produces humiliated, timorous generations,
decadent and docile nations, who are an easy prey to the powerful of the
earth. Whole nations are imposed upon, robbed, devoured, when they have
devoted the whole effort of their will to the mere conquest of a future
existence. Would it not, therefore, be better to cure humanity at once by
boldly closing the miraculous Grottos whither it goes to weep, and thus
restore to it the courage to live the real life, even in the midst of
tears? And it was the same prayer, that incessant flood of prayer which
ascended from Lourdes, the endless supplication in which he had been
immersed and softened: was it not after all but puerile lullaby, a
debasement of all one's energies? It benumbed the will, one's very being
became dissolved in it and acquired disgust for life and action. Of what
use could it be to will anything, do anything, when you totally resigned
yourself to the caprices of an unknown almighty power? And, in another
respect, what a strange thing was this mad desire for prodigies, this
anxiety to drive the Divinity to transgress the laws of Nature
established by Himself in His infinite wisdom! Therein evidently lay
peril and unreasonableness; at the risk even of losing illusion, that
divine comforter, only the habit of personal effort and the courage of
truth should have been developed in man, and especially in the child.